Help from the Official Medicine

Hippocratic hypocrisy

Modern medicine is so advanced that it operates at cellular level. It pretends to be familiar with the human genome and respects things infinitely small. In spite of its great achievements, however, it shies away from a clear opinion about the biological role of a macrostructure that is so common – the male prepuce. Modern medicine is certainly surer about the importance of the homologous clitoral hood in females and clitoris though. Whether this is female chauvinism sex or effemination of medicine cannot be known for sure before the World Health Organization decides on the subject of the foreskin functions. We are all eagerly waiting for this.

Medical authorities would not waste their time with something insignificant. Since they debate about the worth of the foreskin it must be important. The very existence of the dispute shows that approximately half of medics consider prepuce redundant. If they defend the uselessness of what they do not have could perfectly explain their evaluation. The facts that about half of the American physicians are circumcised and that America has a major quota in the World Health Organization pretty well explain but do not justify the irresoluteness of the highest medical establishment about the worth of the prepuce.

The World Health Organization state that there is a “debate about the role of the foreskin, with possible functions including keeping the glans moist, protecting the developing penis in utero, or enhancing sexual pleasure due to the presence of nerve receptors”. [i]

Collegiality, religious correctness and dependence on funding seem to be the causes for the undefined global status of the foreskin. This is evidenced by the different national medical organizations’ attaching importance to the foreskin in strict proportion to the prevalence of circumcision in their countries. Civic virtues and careerism often require partiality and tarnish medical ethics.

Obviously, the disagreement about the naturalness of something natural must have a religious, ethical or political base rather than a scientific one. Ironically, as we proudly step into the 21st century we cannot rely on medical views about the role of simple body parts of ours. Are we fooled by a politicized or shamanistic medicine?

When facts shelter beliefs truth is manipulated. A dispute concerning things physical, liable to experimentation and statistical investigation is always of political or religious origin. A deliberation about a palpable object reveals the fear of the debaters to touch it. This is especially true when they do not have it or feel guilty of having it. Christianity may not circumcise but it represses sexuality too.

That is the ultimate information that top medical authorities give to those who are interested in circumcision. No doubt, prepuces are still lingering in the Dark Ages. Local doctors are often far more determined in their opinions. Is that because they are better informed? Or it is because they know better the religious beliefs of their patients? In any case, since the effects of circumcision are unknown, it is clear that any physician who advocates it violates the Hippocratic Oath.

Why medical authorities are so irresolute about the worth of a part of the skin?